The Butterfly Box (15 page)

Toby had taken special care to be present for this meeting. He had noticed the excitement burn in his sister’s cheeks when she spoke about this man and was curious to see what it was about him that made him different from all the other young men in Polperro who fell in love with her.

‘Please sit down, Mr. . .’ said Jake politely, looking to his daughter to introduce them. Helena, of course, didn’t know his name. Toby caught her eye and grinned. She shot him a look to tell him to behave himself before turning back to her parents.

‘Campione, Ramon Campione,’ said Ramon and sat down on the sofa. His presence was somehow too big for the small sitting room. Helena was undeterred by the amount of sofa he took up with his long arms and legs and sat down next to him.

‘I’m Jake Trebeka and this is my wife Polly and Toby, our son. It’s a pleasure to meet you. My daughter tells me you’re a writer,’ he said.

Ramon nodded. ‘Yes, I’ve written a couple of books of poetry and some short stories,’ he said and his heavy Spanish accent sounded out of place in such an English home.

‘But you’re not here for a book,’ said Polly, putting down the tray of tea. She noticed Ramon’s long glossy hair which she thought could have done with a good cut and the mahogany colour of his intelligent eyes. He was so totally foreign. She had never spoken to a foreigner before.

‘No, Señora, I’m writing an article for
National Geographic
,’ he said.

Polly’s eyes widened and she looked at her daughter in exasperation. ‘Why didn’t you tell us he was writing for
National Geographic
, Helena?’ she said, placing her large hands on her round hips. ‘I love that magazine, so does Toby, don’t you dear?’ she enthused, feeling more comfortable now she was able to place him in a familiar box.

‘We love it,’ Jake agreed, impressed. ‘What’s the article on besides

smuggling?’

‘Well, it’s meant to be on the land of King Arthur,’ Ramon explained. ‘But Helena suggested the smuggling idea. I haven’t passed it by the editor, though.’

‘Oh, the land of King Arthur. What a magical idea,’ enthused Polly.

‘No it’s not, Mum, it’s unoriginal,’ said Helena bluntly.

‘Helena’s right, it’s very unoriginal,’ Toby agreed, grinning at his sister.

‘That all depends on how it’s written,’ said Ramon, his shiny brown eyes smiling at Helena playfully.

‘Well, I said I’d show him the haunts and you, Dad, could fill him in on the history,’ said Helena breezily, smiling back at Ramon.

‘I’d be happy to help,’ said Jake. ‘The
National Geographic
, eh. Now that’s a prestigious magazine. Do you take the photographs as well?’

‘Everything,’ said Ramon. Polly nodded in admiration.

‘So you see, he’s not a murderer, is he?’ said Helena. Polly glared at her. Jake laughed. Toby nearly choked on his tea.

‘I hope not,’ he chuckled. ‘Be sure to show him Crag Creek,’ he added.

Helena beamed triumphantly. ‘I’ll show him everything,’ she said.

Helena and Ramon spent the following ten days cycling around the coast. She showed him places he would never have found without her help. She’d prepare picnics for them, which they’d eat on the beaches, chatting with the familiarity of two people who have known each other for a good many years. They talked to people in pubs and fishing boats, explored caves and creeks and swam in the sea. Ramon had wanted to kiss her from the first moment he had endured the arrogance of her conversation. His chance came after a couple of days when they were picnicking quietly on a remote beach. Helena had only packed one piece of her mother’s chocolate cake. Ramon suggested she halve it. Helena refused and placed the whole piece into her mouth at once, giggling triumphantly.

‘Well I’ll just have to go and get it then,’ he said. Helena tried to stand up, silently protesting with her hands for her mouth was too full to speak. But Ramon was too quick for her. He lay on top of her and pinned her onto the sand with his hands. She glared at him with ice-cold eyes that a moment before had been warm and inviting. But to his amusement she couldn’t refuse him verbally, so he placed his mouth onto hers with his Latin ardour and kissed her chocolate lips. Then he devoured the curve in her neck and the rise of her

collarbone. Finally she swallowed hard and was able to speak.

‘Ramon! What are you doing?’ she protested.

‘Shut up, I’ve heard all I want to hear from you for the moment. Now, relax and let me kiss you, I’ve been longing to from the first moment I saw you in Polperro,’ he said and placed his lips on hers again to silence her. She relaxed as he had instructed and closed her eyes, aware only of his warm mouth and the light feeling in her stomach.

Ramon left Polperro after two weeks. He kissed Helena goodbye on the quay where they had first met. She was too proud to show her sorrow so she smiled at him as if she didn’t care. Only afterwards did she cry into the spongy bosom of her mother. ‘I think I love him, Mum,’ she sobbed. Polly wrapped her arms around her and told her that if he loved her he’d come back for her. If he didn’t then she wasn’t to waste any more of her time on him. ‘Summer romances are lovely things in themselves, dear, sometimes they’re best left as they are.’

But Ramon hadn’t forgotten about Helena. He had tried to. He had written up his article and sent it off to his editor. Then he had gone to his parents’ house in Cachagua where he had moped around like a lovesick schoolboy, sat on the beach watching the sea with a heavy heart, thinking of Polperro and the mermaid he had left there. He tried everything to forget her. He slept with a few girls he picked up, but that only made his ardour stronger. He wrote poems about her and a short story about the daughter of a Cornish smuggler. His parents were delighted. He had never been in love before and they had almost despaired of his cold heart and lonely wanderings. So Mariana had talked to him, told him to follow his feelings instead of fighting them. They’re not going to go away, Ramon,’ she had said. ‘Enjoy them and indulge them. That’s what love is for. You’re lucky to feel like that, some people go through life and never experience it.’ So Ramon had called his editor and asked to add one small paragraph.

‘What’s that then?’ his editor asked curiously. He liked the article very much, but they wanted to run it immediately. ‘I hope it’s not long, I won’t have space,’ he said.

‘No, it’s not long. I’ll dictate it to you.’

‘All right. Go ahead.’

‘The most beautiful and magical place of all is Helena Beach in Polperro, a small cove of silver white sand with a pale blue sea of such translucence that

she lures you into the depths of her mysteries until your heart is captured and your soul enslaved. I left knowing that I would never be the same again and that I would be hers for ever. It is only a question of time before I go back to give myself to her, body and soul.’

‘Quite a beach, Ramon,’ said the editor dryly. ‘I shouldn’t allow it to go in, but as it’s you.’ Then he added with a smile, ‘I just hope none of our readers try to find it, they might be disappointed!’

When Helena received the copy of
National Ceographic
she knew it was from Ramon, although there was no note attached. She tore open the paper and leafed through the pages with a trembling hand. Then she sat at the kitchen table and read his article. She wept at the photographs, taken together, and the way he wrote which was uniquely poetical and touched her heart. When her eyes found the paragraph about ‘Helena Beach’ they were so misted she could barely read it. Blinking away her tears she had to read it again in case she had read too much into it. Then she smiled because she knew that he loved her and that he’d come back for her. He had been worth waiting for after all.

Ramon sat on the beach, thinking of Polperro, thinking of his wife and children sitting on the quay in the harbour and his heart lurched for them. He thought of the way he first felt about Helena and the way he now felt about Estella. Love, he sniffed, what’s the use? It always goes sour in the end, he thought bleakly. How could he love Estella when he hadn’t even been capable of loving his wife properly? It was better not to love at all.

Later when he returned to the house he had made up his mind. He would leave immediately and forget about Estella. He should have forgotten about Helena all those years ago, at least he wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.

Opening his maps he cast his eye to India and nodded. India, that's as good a place as any.

England

Toby Trebeka had stayed the night in London in order to be close to Heathrow airport for his sister’s arrival the following morning. He had volunteered to go. He didn’t like to think of her having to take a train or a bus down to Cornwall, especially not in her fragile state of mind. His parents had told him she had decided to leave Ramon. He was saddened. She had been so happy at the beginning. Wasn’t everyone? He felt sorry for the children, torn between two people like that, feeling themselves to blame for their parents’ failure to love one another. It always affected children more than people realized. Still, he thought, one can’t live one’s life entirely for one’s children. Not that he’d ever have that problem.

Toby had always been different from the other boys growing up in Polperro. In spite of being of an athletic build he hadn’t enjoyed sport, except for fishing, which the other boys thought incredibly dull and antisocial, especially because he always threw back the fish he had caught. He refused to eat meat - ‘anything with a mother or a face’ he explained. But Toby had sailed off in his father’s small boat to look at the fish in spite of their mockery. He used to sit out there in the rough sea for hours on end with only the seagulls for company and the sound of his own voice humming the bad love songs he listened to on the wireless. He was handsome with pale luminous skin and sensitive eyes that cried easily, usually at things other people wouldn’t have even flinched at, like the sight of a shimmering shoal of fish beneath the surface of the sea or a lone crab running for cover beneath a rock. It was only his cheery nature and sharp wit that prevented him from being bullied at school and because he was so much brighter than the other boys. He earned their respect by humour and by his readiness to laugh at himself. He collected insects, which he kept in large glass containers with all the luxuries they could possibly need from foliage to food, and spent hours nurturing and studying them. He read books on trees and animals and subscribed to the
National Geographic.
He knew he was different. His mother had told him to ‘make a feature’ of his differences. So he hadn’t tried to like football or rugby, he hadn’t tried to like smoking and sitting in pubs discussing girls. For that matter he hadn’t tried to like girls either -well, not in the way the other boys expected him to ‘like’ them.

When he was about fifteen and the only boy in the class never to have kissed

a girl he forced little Joanna Black up against the wall and kissed her in front of everyone just to prove that he could. He had hated himself for it. Not only because he had hurt Joanna Black and sent her running into the classroom sobbing with the force of a woman robbed of her virginity, but because he hadn’t liked it. It hadn’t felt right. The boys patted him on his back with admiration. Joanna Black was one of the prettiest girls in the school. But the hot rush of pride to his head had been quickly replaced by a burning shame that tugged at his conscience. Joanna Black never spoke to him again. Even when he saw her in the grocery shop years later, she still stuck her nose up and stalked out without so much as a glance. He had tried to apologize, but it felt silly apologizing for something that had happened so long ago.

In the sixties, when Toby was a teenager, he had more ‘girlfriends’ than any other boy in Polperro. Girls adored him. He was funny, enjoyed gossip and intrigue, treated them with respect and was never nervous with them or too shy to say what he thought. He was attractive in an endearing way with those lucid eyes that assured them he understood them better than other boys. His large smile was honest and his kind face approachable. They all loved him and yet he never loved them in the way they longed for him to love them.

The sea was an escape for Toby when he wanted to avoid the boys in the pub discussing girls and how far they’d got. He would sail out into the salty mists where he could be himself, where he didn’t have to conform to anything. He remembered his mother’s advice, but he couldn’t make a feature out of homosexuality without offending the entire town. He had known he was gay from a very early age, but homosexuality was vehemently outlawed by their sheltered society and Polperro was too small to hide in. So, in 1967, at the age of eighteen, he chose to leave Polperro and look for work in London. His parents hadn’t understood why he needed to go off and work in London, there was plenty of work locally for an intelligent young man like Toby. His father wanted him to work with him making windows and doorframes but Toby couldn’t explain that he winced at the very idea of cutting magnificent trees into little pieces. He couldn’t explain so he didn’t. He just packed his bags and left. His mother was devastated, his father angry. ‘You sweat blood to bring them up and then the ungrateful sods leave without so much as a thank you,’ he growled. By that time Helena was travelling the world with Ramon. Jake and Polly found themselves more alone than when they had first married, because they knew what it was like to have the house filled with the laughter of their

children. Now all they had left were echoes, which were louder than the silence had been in those pre-children days.

It had taken years for Toby to find a job. Not because he wasn’t employable - he had left school at eighteen with good grades - but because he couldn’t find something that he enjoyed doing. As he explained to his parents, ‘If I’m going to be working for the rest of my life it had better be something I love or it’s not worth living.’ They couldn’t help but agree with him, which is why they were confused by his decision to leave Polperro. There were no fishing boats in London, no wide-open sea for him to lose himself in. Toby had tried working in the City but only lasted three weeks. He brushed off his hasty departure with a cheery smile stating simply that he wasn’t cut out for the City. He tried his hand at everything from selling to marketing to designing kitchens. But he soon grew disheartened and behind the smile he presented to his friends as each new failure defeated him lay the frightened soul of a man confused and alienated. He didn’t belong in London, or the City, or the offices of Mayfair. He didn’t belong in the world of married couples and children either. He knew where his world lay, but it might as well have been at the foot of the rainbow for he was too afraid to find it. He longed for his home, for the sea and for the security of that fishing boat hidden in the impenetrable ocean mists. Then one night in a bar he met a flaxen young man called Julian Fable who changed his life for ever. They both had too much to drink, Toby to drown his misery, Julian to give him courage. When they left the bar Julian turned to Toby and, taking his forlorn face in his hands, he kissed him. Suddenly Toby felt an enormous release, as if the shadow he had been was at last covered with a skin that felt comfortable to live in. Finally in 1973, at the age of twenty-four, he returned to Polperro with Julian, complete and contented. They bought a cottage outside Polperro where Julian built a dark room for his photography and Toby bought a boat, which he christened
'The Helena
¹
and started up his own business taking tourists for rides around the coast, and at last he settled down. He had found himself.

 

For the first few years no one thought it was in the least bit strange that Toby Trebeka was living with another man. But when people began to notice that they never dated nor chased girls, gossip and rumour started to rise like the sea mists until it became overwhelming and impossible to ignore. Toby had been happily going about his own business, never interfering with anyone

else’s. It deeply saddened him that he should have to explain himself to anyone. But he was left no choice. He arrived one evening at his parents’ house for dinner. They were curious as to why he should invite himself for dinner in the middle of the week and an uneasy feeling invaded their home. Jake and Polly had both suspected he might be gay, but as long as it wasn’t discussed or flaunted in front of them they ignored it. Pretended it wasn’t there. Like hiding a stain in the carpet with a potted plant, they were happy to leave it unattended in spite of the friends and neighbours who talked about it behind their backs.

‘How is everything?’ Jake asked warily while Polly stirred the vegetable soup with a firm hand.

‘Fine, thanks, Dad,’ said Toby, swallowing down a gulp of wine to give him courage.

‘So all’s well then,’ said Polly from beside the Aga, her tight smile betraying her anxiety.

‘Look, Mum, Dad. I’m gay,’ Toby said bluntly. He had the same direct approach as his sister yet it still managed to take both parents by surprise. He sighed heavily and let the wine feel for him. Jake knocked back his brandy. Polly stirred the soup with vigour. For a while no one spoke. Left alone with their thoughts the silence isolated them from each other. Only Toby’s heart soared weightless in his chest, more buoyant than ever.

‘So Julian’s your.. .’

‘Lover, Dad. Julian’s my lover, my friend. I don’t expect you to understand, just to accept that this is the way I choose to live. I don’t want people gossiping about me behind your backs. You have a right to know,’ he replied, looking at his father steadily.

‘I’ve always taught you to be independent,’ Polly began, approaching the table.

‘To make a feature of our differences,’ said Toby wryly.

‘To make a feature of your differences,’ she said and chuckled. ‘Well, I’m proud of you. It takes a lot of courage to go against the tide.’

‘I think I’ve been swimming against the tide all my life,’ Toby mused, smiling sadly.

‘Well, I’ll swim with you, Toby dear,’ said Polly, bending down to kiss him.

He put his arms around her thick waist. ‘This means a lot to me, Mum,’ he choked.

‘I know,’ she replied, patting him on the back. ‘I know.’